In a Gilded Cage
by Neva
Summary: Abandoned by his parents, Warren evaluates his new situation. Set before the beginning of the "New Mutants" arc.


**A/N: **I'm pretty sure I've used this title before, or something like it, but it's kind of like making a pun when the opportunity arises in order to avoid a rift in the universe. I've been wanting to write the Ultimate version of this character for a while -- I'm very much in favor of what Bendis did with him, and he ended up having a pretty strong voice in my head.  
  
Disclaimer: Marvel's, not mine.  
  
I.  
  
_It can happen to anyone.  
  
_They said that in order to educate the public. Translation: to scare some, and to put to rest the fears of others, the ones who believed that an active X-gene marked them as Satan's creatures. If that were indeed true, then Satan's aesthetic sense of humor was not lost on the latest piece of living proof that when they said , they meant it.  
  
This was how it went. One minute he was talking to... to that girl, the daughter of a colleague of his father's (and he wasn't even remotely surprised that he'd already forgotten whether her name was Cindy or Cathy). The next, he was clawing at his back with one hand and trying to undo the buttons on his jacket with the other, knowing all the time that it wouldn't make any difference because whatever it was was trying to rip its way _out_ of him and it hurt goddamit it _hurt_...  
  
If first his yowling, then the end result of all that pain, hadn't been enough to break up the party before you could say mutant menace, before you could say, freaks of society, then the sight of his mom sinking gracefully into the skirt of her evening gown, like a fairy-tale mermaid dissolving into sea-foam, had done the trick.  
  
After that, things had snowballed fairly quickly. His father had often prided himself on Getting Things Done as efficiently and diplomatically as possible, eliminating the obstacles and neutralizing any opposing voices so subtly that the voices didn't even realize that they were being forcibly stilled until it was far too late. Never had those talents been more obvious than in the days following that one evening.  
  
II.  
  
If he didn't think about it too much, it was okay.  
  
No, no, screw that. And not only because the core reason for his solitude wasn't something that he could ignore, even if he'd really, honestly wanted to. (He wasn't even sure about that much yet. _Ask me again in a week or twelve._) If he ignored the resulting kerfuffle and just concentrated on the here-and-now -- and did so squinty-eyed and with his head tilted -- he could see how it was every seventeen-year-old kid's dream come true. Living on a slice of his parents' posh estate, with attending staff who saw to its every need... and to his. His parents never bothered him, and he didn't have to answer to anyone. He could come and go as he pleased, as long as nobody saw him.  
  
But what were his other options, really? Calling up some of the people he'd spent time with at school? _Hey guys, it's Warren. My mom and dad up and left me alone when they couldn't stand to look at these great big honking_ wings _anymore. Party at my place!_ It wasn't like he'd ever really liked parties all that much, even before.  
  
He'd missed his parents, too, at first, after they were long gone but before the anger, then more than anger, had set in. And it wasn't because he'd seen so much more of them growing up than he'd seen of Travis and the others, as much as because of what it _meant_. They hadn't been perfect, but they were his _parents_, and he'd wished that memories of family vacations and good-night kisses, the ones he could remember, were stronger than the memories of his mother's horror-striken face and of how his father wouldn't even look him in the eye on that last day.  
  
III.  
  
He distantly remembered an era when he wished for more time to do... whatever. Funny how he couldn't remember how to fill in the blanks.  
  
He studied in the mornings, wrote all his papers at night (he just ended up staring out the windows if it was light out). Read a lot, sometimes watched TV if he was incredibly bored, although sports or whatever movie was on Pay-Per-View tended to turn, more often than not, to reports of the X-Men's latest do-good endeavor. And this always left Warren with a mix of guilt (not that he could _exactly_ picture himself putting on Spandex and saving the world from super-powered criminals, but it was hard not to imagine, especially when he saw _them_ going at it), nearly wistful envy that he couldn't figure, and even an edge of __ cynicism. He wasn't sheltered enough not to know what the story was now between Charles Xavier's people and the same government that'd turned the Sentinels loose.  
  
It could happen to anyone, and did -- this new sense of _oh-my-God-it's-not-going-away,_ then of _adapt-or-die_. If ever there was proof that freaks like him were just part of evolution...  
  
He knew that other mutants probably had it worse. _Definitely had it worse._ The ones who were forced to live on the street, or join the Brotherhood; the ones who were hunted like rats and strung up from trees. He supposed that from the outside, his resentment and confusion and that loneliness that struck him at unexpected intervals could be seen as another version of the spoiled kid who has it all and isn't satisfied. He couldn't help the way he felt, but he'd be damned (hah, that was supposed to be funny) if he'd let anyone else know.  
  
IV.  
  
The wings themselves weren't that much of a hassle. They hadn't quite become part of him yet; there was still that added space that he had to remember was occupied by parts of his body, and occasionally the crashing of something breakable to the floor when he forgot. He couldn't go out in public without throwing a baggy overcoat over bare skin and feathers, but that was actually sort of okay with him. The not-going-out part.  
  
Shirts were pointless. He ate the same things he always did, learned to sleep facedown and what shrugging or twisting or bending over would mean at any given time.  
  
He wasn't completely convinced that he wouldn't plummet if he tried flying more than short distances. He practiced anyway, early in the morning. Practice was all it was, he told himself. Practice for if he ever did decide to spend extended amounts of time out in the world (not likely), and was surrounded from all sides, and there was literally no place to go but up.  
  
Except that practical escape maneuvers shouldn't be about the shadows of the trees on the fields far below him, or the cries of the birds in his ears, or the cold satiny air on his face and chest and arms. The thrill of testing himself more and more, seeing how high he can go until that air turns to ice and becomes impossible to breathe. A little further, a little higher, each time.  
  
Even when he did stop to think about it, about what had come before, it didn't seem to matter quite so much when he was aloft.  
  
All of this just _might_ be worth giving up the past for.


End file.
